An End-to-End Design and Simulation Methodology for Evaluating Package-Induced Signal Integrity Degradation in PCIe Channels

TL;DR

This paper introduces a simulation method to assess how package design affects signal quality in high-speed PCIe 5.0 channels.

Contribution

A unified end-to-end simulation framework for evaluating package-induced signal integrity degradation in PCIe channels.

Findings

Localized package discontinuities compound through the channel, reducing system-level signal quality.

Impedance mismatch and via stubs significantly impact insertion loss and eye diagrams.

Package-level impairments must be analyzed in the full end-to-end context for accurate evaluation.

Abstract

This paper presents an end-to-end simulation methodology for evaluating package-induced signal integrity (SI) degradation in a peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) 5.0 channel. By integrating package, printed circuit board (PCB), and add-in card (AIC) structures into a unified simulation flow, the proposed approach enables accurate assessment of system-level eye diagram degradation. Various package-level degradation factors, such as impedance mismatch, meander routing, and via stubs, are assumed and designed to analyze their individual and combined effects on insertion loss, intra-pair skew, and eye diagrams. Results show that even localized discontinuities inside the package propagate and compound through the end-to-end channel, causing a significant reduction in the eye diagram at the system level. These findings demonstrate that package-induced impairments cannot be evaluated solely at the package level but must instead be analyzed within a complete end-to-end channel environment. The proposed methodology provides a practical framework for predicting system-level SI degradation caused by package design choices, offering valuable insights for next-generation high-speed package and channel co-design.

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